[As usual for these map-based posts, the bigger your screen, the better.] I'll continue the analysis of building and census data that I started in my previous post. Today I introduce a new metric, which determines how close together buildings are in a given census tract. For each building in a tract, we measure how … Continue reading Crowded, or not
Author: Jeff Eby
The Ways We Live
Today I'm going to combine two data sets that I've worked with before. One is the Microsoft building database (yep, I just can't quit it!). The other is the US Census housing data, at the census tract level. Merging these two data sets provides a look at the different ways we've built up this vast … Continue reading The Ways We Live
Voting and Vaccination
Back in April, the New York Times published an article about the correlation between 2020 presidential voting and Covid-19 vaccination rates. They found that the more a state or county voted for Trump, the lower the vaccination rate. Today I'll do an update, using recent data. Not surprisingly, the correlation is still there. The amount … Continue reading Voting and Vaccination
A Slightly Shorter Hike
My previous post determined that there was no way to travel across the US on an west-east parallel without encountering a building (in fact, you'll run into hundreds of them). Today we'll figure out if there's a north-south line of longitude (or, meridian) that avoids man-made structures. At first glance, it seems more likely. There … Continue reading A Slightly Shorter Hike
A Long Hike
[If you're reading this in email, I recommend following the link above to read it in a web browser. Some of the maps below won't display correctly in an email. I also recommend reading this on a PC - a large screen makes viewing the maps easier.] Imagine you're standing somewhere on the west coast … Continue reading A Long Hike
COVID – It Ain’t Over Yet
There are all sorts of graphs showing the progression of COVID. We've all seen graphs that show the number of COVID deaths over time. There's a lot of variation, depending on the state and/or country. This makes sense - different regions were hit in different ways. So, New York, the early epicenter in the US: … Continue reading COVID – It Ain’t Over Yet
Visualizing Where We are From
As I mentioned in my previous post, the US Census place-of-birth data is available at the census tract level. Wouldn't it be nice to visualize this, by looking at a map of a state? And be able to zoom down to cities and neighborhoods, and see the differences from tract to tract? Well, now you … Continue reading Visualizing Where We are From
Where We are From
Today we're going to look at the same Census place-of-birth data as my earlier post. But this time, instead of looking at the state level, we'll drill down to something called a Census Tract. A census tract is a small, usually permanent geographical division. Typically their population ranges between 1,200 and 8,000, with an optimum … Continue reading Where We are From
Binned Heatmaps
The New York Times has a lot of good COVID info; one of their pages tracts the vaccine rollout rate per state. Here's today's graph: This is known as a 'heatmap' - it uses colors to differentiate the values of the regions (here, states). In this case, it's a 'binned' heatmap - the map uses … Continue reading Binned Heatmaps
Pausing AstraZeneca
Many European countries have paused the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine, due to a small number of reported blood clot cases in people who recently received the vaccine. Obviously any possible serious side effects need to be studied, but the decision to actually halt the use of the vaccine has its own costs. Let's do … Continue reading Pausing AstraZeneca